i asked you once:

how much does a heart weigh?

you laughed at it; you turned to me and told me to search it up myself, and i could only force a smile and brush the matter off with a self-deprecating comment—and of course, of course, you forgot completely about it.

now, i think i have a better way to phrase my thoughts:

do you know the inexplainable weight we have in our hearts sometimes? the make-believe stone that grounds us when our (make-believe) wings flap and flap to try and get us up; the one that clogs up everything and make our day a whole mess of foggy thoughts and clouded actions?

i felt those all the time, you know. you may not know this, but i'm really a very sensitive person inside. if you hold me too roughly, i might just break like one of those useless glass ornaments.

(no, i'm just lying! it was a joke. did you really fall for it? even if it was true, you wouldn't believe me, right? right?)

nowadays, though, i think i feel a little different. good days are still the same—my heart has the weight of a helium balloon, only barely held in place by a brittle skeleton, and it passes in a blur of euphoria and laughter. bad days mix in with good days, however—

"how much does my heart weigh?"

i asked myself that a while back, and i frowned, because i tried to judge it but all i can come up with is overwhelming emptiness.

it seems that there's a hole where my heart is, because there's no weight to it now. someone has taken a tiny scalpel and dug every last bit of bloody muscle out until there's nothing but a hole left.

"why a tiny scalpel?"

because, you see, i still recall feeling things. if there any particular event that happened, it would be a big scalpel; one that broke me inside out in a hundred different ways all at once. and if that were the case, i would have felt something horrible before feeling nothing, right?

i can't remember how it all ended up like this, you know. i can't remember being able to feel anything. i can't remember and all of a sudden—before i knew it, before anyone knew it—everything's been stolen away bit by bit and i'm left with nothing.

and i want to panic. i want to scream and beg for my life back, but it's just so tiring; i'm so worn out and empty and there's no use for tears.

so what comes out isn't "give them back" or "why me?"—

it's

"kill me."

if my wings have broken before they're able to get me off the ground; if something heavy prevents me from feeling anything, why should i want to live?

can this pathetic, frayed thing that doesn't know what it's supposed to do be considered a life?

kill me, kill me, kill me.

was everything too much for my pathetic little self? was it memories that had chained me down? had i set myself up for being pulled back down by gravity?

ah.

in the end, i let go of my own heart, didn't i?

i threw it away, didn't i?

no wonder.

(i hoped someone would have caught it. even though it was impossible, i hoped that someone would remember it.)

no wonder i can't remember the weight of a heart.

boop idk i wrote most of it before german class and decided to finish it,,,

also most of the short general fiction oneshots i write are in a single Pages document called "vents" but then i decided it was too emo and like what if my parents find it so i named it aircon vents instead